Recently, research led by the Center for Social Innovation was featured in the VoxDev article: How lumpy investments determine the effect of expanding financial services: Evidence from Uganda. Read the full article on VoxDev or our website

The Center for Social Innovation recently released its 2022 annual report, detailing all of the interesting work being done at the center and the exciting projects coming down the pipeline in the coming months.

It has been a very exciting year for the Center as we continue many of the popular programs that have taken place in past years and add on new projects. I have enormous shoes to fill in taking over Directorship of the Center from Christine Mahoney—the Founder and Director of the Center for its first 10 years. I hope you all will join me in thinking about and participating in new and exciting opportunities for the Center.

Privatisation can directly increase the productivity of treatment centres, and thus indirectly increase the productivity of desludging truckers. However, privatisation is not necessarily a panacea for the problems of the sanitation sector. Privatised management of the treatment centres could lead to market power, particularly if the treatment centres are managed by actors from the downstream trucking market. This could lead to lower quantities of services provided and welfare transfers from consumers to a few connected suppliers.

On January 28, 2022, Professor Molly Lipscomb received the 2021 Public Impact Focused Research Award from the Office of the Vice President at the University of Virginia. The Research Achievement Awards are annual honors dedicated to recognizing excellence in research by university faculty in their respective fields over the course of their careers.

Monica Gray Logothetis is a Batten Alumna, and recently served as a Fellow in Residence at the Center for Social Innovation. She recently delivered a TEDx talk discussing her research and innovative proposal to address recidivism and the lack of economic and social opportunity for formerly incarcerated people in the United States.

Jonathan Walters is an energy economist focusing on climate change mitigation. He has provided energy and climate policy advice to more than 60 governments in the developing world and Europe, and has served as a Director at the World Bank. Now, at the beginning of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, he will share some key lessons learned and speculate about next steps for our worldwide climate response.